WASHINGTON: Republican leaders projected confidence Thursday that they will keep control of the US House as more races were decided in their favor, while Democrats insisted they still see a path toward the majority and sought assurances every vote will be counted.
The GOP picked up two more hard-fought seats in Pennsylvania, which became a stark battlefield of Democratic losses up and down the ticket. Democrats notched another win in New York, defeating a third Republican incumbent in that state.
Both parties in the House huddled privately on conference calls to assess the political landscape as Congress prepared to return next week to a changed Washington, where a sweep of MAGA-infused GOP power is within reach for President-elect Donald Trump.
“The latest data indicates that we will also hold — and likely grow — our Republican majority in the House,” Speaker Mike Johnson said in a letter to colleagues, seeking their support to keep the gavel.
But Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said “it has yet to be decided” which party will control the House as several key races remained uncalled.
Seeing their options narrow, Democrats focused on flipping a handful of seats in Arizona, California and possibly Oregon to close the gap.
“We must count every vote,” Jeffries said.
A final tally in the House will almost certainly have to wait until next week, at the soonest, when Congress is back in session and prepares to elect its new leaders, including nominees for House speaker and the senator who will replace outgoing GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
The election results were beyond what Republicans had even hoped for, including a majority in the Senate, where two races were still undecided — in Arizona between Democrat Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake and in Nevada between Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen and Republican Sam Brown.
The Associated Press called more races Thursday. In Pennsylvania, Republican Ryan Mackenzie defeated incumbent Democratic Rep. Susan Wild in the Allentown-area district, and Republican Robert Bresnahan dislodged Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright in the Northeast part of the state.
Pennsylvania’s Senate race between Sen. Bob Casey and wealthy businessman Dave McCormick was decided in McCormick’s favor, giving Republicans a 53rd seat in the chamber.
Democrats made up some ground in New York, where Laura Gillen beat incumbent GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, the third flip for Democrats in Jeffries’ home state.
Attention increasingly focused on the West, where Democrats were eyeing what’s left of their path to the majority.
Democrats would need to sweep the most contested races, including two in Arizona and several in California, to win power. But tallies are expected to drag on as California, in particular, counts mail-in ballots that are arriving in the week after the election.
Republican Rep. Richard Hudson, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told lawmakers on a private call that he’s confident the GOP will hold the House majority, according to a Republican who is familiar with the call but spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose details.
Trump is consolidating power in Washington, returning to the White House a much more dominant force than in his first term, when Republicans split over their support for him and some were openly skeptical of if not opposed to his rise.
This time, Johnson and Senate GOP leaders have drawn closer to Trump, relying on his power for their own as they drive a common Republican agenda more aligned with his “Make America Great Again” priorities.
Johnson, in his letter to colleagues, used a football metaphor to say he’s “ready to take the field with all of you” to play “the biggest offense of our lives.”
While Johnson is in line to remain House speaker in the new Congress, if Republicans keep control, the question of who will replace McConnell, who led his party in flipping Senate control, is its own intense contest.
The choices facing Republican senators for a new leader are between the “Johns” — No. 2 Republican Sen. John Thune and Texas Sen. John Cornyn — and a longshot, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who is favored by hard-right Senate conservatives who want Trump to weigh in on the race.
Cornyn and Thune, who both campaigned for Trump, are building support among senators in what is expected to be a close race on private ballots.
Thune has worked to mend a rocky relationship with Trump, and the two spoke as recently as Wednesday, according to another Republican familiar with the private conversation who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss it.
The South Dakota senator had been critical of Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 election for stoking claims of fraudulent voting ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. Thune and Trump have been in touch throughout the year, the person said.
Thune has suggested it might be best if Trump stayed out of the leadership race.
“It’s his prerogative to weigh in on that,” Thune said on Fox News. “Frankly, I think if he lets it play out, we’ll get the right person. I’ve had conversations with him and have told him that we want to get his team in place so that he can hit the ground running and get to work on an agenda to make sure that he and our team succeeds.”
The Republicans are eyeing quick action aligned with Trump’s day-one priorities, which revolve around cutting taxes, deporting immigrants who are in the country without certain legal status, and reducing federal regulations and operations.
But after the chaos of the past two years of GOP control of the House, it’s unclear how much Republicans will be able to accomplish, especially if they have another razor-thin majority with few seats to spare for dissent, in the face of resistance from Democrats.
Republicans pick up more key House seats while Democrats insist they still have a path to a majority
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Republicans pick up more key House seats while Democrats insist they still have a path to a majority
- Seeing their options narrow, Democrats focused on flipping a handful of seats in Arizona, California and possibly Oregon to close the gap
- Trump is consolidating power in Washington, returning to the White House a much more dominant force than in his first term
Mounting economic costs of India’s killer smog
- India’s capital New Delhi frequently ranks among the world’s most polluted cities
- One study estimate India’s economic losses due to worsening air pollution at $95 billion yearly
NEW DELHI: Noxious smog smothering the plains of north India is not only choking the lungs of residents and killing millions, but also slowing the country’s economic growth.
India’s capital New Delhi frequently ranks among the world’s most polluted cities. Each winter, vehicle and factory emissions couple with farm fires from surrounding states to blanket the city in a dystopian haze.
Acrid smog this month contains more than 50 times the World Health Organization recommended limit of fine particulate matter — dangerous cancer-causing microparticles known as PM2.5 pollutants, that enter the bloodstream through the lungs.
Experts say India’s worsening air pollution is having a ruinous impact on its economy — with one study estimating losses to the tune of $95 billion annually, or roughly three percent of the country’s GDP.
The true extent of the economic price India is paying could be even greater.
“The externality costs are huge and you can’t assign a value to it,” said Vibhuti Garg, of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
Bhargav Krishna of the Delhi-based research collective Sustainable Futures Collaborative said “costs add up in every phase.”
“From missing a day at work to developing chronic illness, the health costs associated with that, to premature death and the impact that has on the family of the person,” Krishna told AFP.
Still, several studies have tried to quantify the damage.
One by the global consultancy firm Dalberg concluded that in 2019, air pollution cost Indian businesses $95 billion due to “reduced productivity, work absences and premature death.”
The amount is nearly three percent of India’s budget, and roughly twice its annual public health expenditure.
“India lost 3.8 billion working days in 2019, costing $44 billion to air pollution caused by deaths,” according to the study which calculated that toxic air “contributes to 18 percent of all deaths in India.”
Pollution has also had a debilitating impact on the consumer economy because of direct health-related eventualities, the study said, reducing footfall and causing annual losses of $22 billion.
The numbers are even more staggering for Delhi, the epicenter of the crisis, with the capital province losing as much as six percent of its GDP annually to air pollution.
Restaurateur Sandeep Anand Goyle called the smog a “health and wealth hazard.”
“People who are health conscious avoid stepping out so we suffer,” said Goyle, who heads the Delhi chapter of the National Restaurant Association of India.
Tourism has also been impacted, as the smog season coincides with the period when foreigners traditionally visit northern India — too hot for many during the blisteringly hot summers.
“The smog is giving a bad name to India’s image,” said Rajiv Mehra of the Indian Association of Tour Operators.
Delhi faces an average 275 days of unhealthy air a year, according to monitors.
Piecemeal initiatives by the government — that critics call half-hearted — have failed to adequately address the problem.
Academic research indicates that its detrimental impact on the Indian economy is adding up.
A 2023 World Bank paper said that air pollution’s “micro-level” impacts on the economy translate to “macro-level effects that can be observed in year-to-year changes in GDP.”
The paper estimates that India’s GDP would have been 4.5 percent higher at the end of 2023, had the country managed to curb pollution by half in the previous 25 years.
Another study published in the Lancet health journal on the direct health impacts of air pollution in 2019 estimated an annual GDP deceleration of 1.36 percent due to “lost output from premature deaths and morbidity.”
Desperate emergency curbs — such as shuttering schools to reduce traffic emissions as well as banning construction — come with their own economic costs.
“Stopping work for weeks on end every winter makes our schedules go awry, and we end up overshooting budgets,” said Sanjeev Bansal, the chairman of the Delhi unit of the Builders Association of India.
Pollution’s impact on the Indian economy is likely to get worse if action is not taken.
With India’s median age expected to rise to 32 by 2030, the Dalberg study predicts that “susceptibility to air pollution will increase, as will the impact on mortality.”
Biden praises COP29 deal, vows US action despite Trump
- Biden hailed the goal as “ambitious,” though poorer nations quickly decried it as inadequate
- As agreed, developed nations will pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developing countries green their economies and prepare for worse disasters
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden praised the COP29 deal Saturday as a “significant step” to fighting global warming, and pledged continued action by America despite his incoming successor Donald Trump’s climate skepticism.
“While there is still substantial work ahead of us to achieve our climate goals, today’s outcome puts us one significant step closer,” Biden said in a statement.
After two exhausting weeks of negotiations in Azerbaijan, the pact hammered out commits developed nations to pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developing countries green their economies and prepare for worse disasters.
Biden hailed the goal as “ambitious,” though poorer nations quickly decried it as inadequate.
The Baku meeting kicked off shortly after Trump won a new term in the White House, potentially setting the stage for him to undo actions by Biden’s administration.
Biden, who leaves office on January 20, said he was “confident” the United States “will continue this work: through our states and cities, our businesses, and our citizens, supported by durable legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act.”
“While some may seek to deny or delay the clean energy revolution that’s underway in America and around the world, nobody can reverse it — nobody.”
A $300B a year deal for climate cash at UN summit sparks outrage for some and hope for others
BAKU, Azerbaijan: United Nations climate talks adopted a deal to inject at least $300 billion annually in humanity’s fight against climate change, aimed at helping developing nations cope with the ravages of global warming in tense negotiations.
The $300 billion will go to developing countries who need the cash to wean themselves off the coal, oil and gas that causes the globe to overheat, adapt to future warming and pay for the damage caused by climate change’s extreme weather. It’s not near the full amount of $1.3 trillion that developing countries were asking for, but it’s three times a deal of $100 billion a year from 2009 that is expiring. Some delegations said this deal is headed in the right direction, with hopes that more money flows in the future.
But it was not quite the agreement by consensus that these meetings usually operate with and some developing nations were livid about being ignored.
COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev gaveled the deal into acceptance before any nation had a chance to speak. When they did they blasted him for being unfair to them, the deal for not being enough and the world’s rich nations for being too stingy.
“It’s a paltry sum,” India negotiator Chandni Raina said, repeatedly saying how India objected to rousing cheers. “I’m sorry to say we cannot accept it.”
She told The Associated Press that she has lost faith in the United Nations system.
After a deal, nations express their discontent
A long line of nations agreed with India and piled on, with Nigeria’s Nkiruka Maduekwe, CEO of the National Council on Climate Change, calling the deal an insult and a joke.
“I’m disappointed. It’s definitely below the benchmark that we have been fighting for for so long,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey, of the Panama delegation. He noted that a few changes, including the inclusion of the words “at least” before the number $300 billion and an opportunity for revision by 2030, helped push them to the finish line.
“Our heart goes out to all those nations that feel like they were walked over,” he said.
The final package pushed through “does not speak or reflect or inspire confidence,” India’s Raina said.
“We absolutely object to the unfair means followed for adoption,” Raina said. “We are extremely hurt by this action by the president and the secretariat.”
Speaking for nearly 50 of the poorest nations of the world, Evans Davie Njewa of Malawi was more mild, expressing what he called reservations with the deal. And the Alliance of Small Island States’ Cedric Schuster said he had more hope “that the process would protect the interests of the most vulnerable” but nevertheless expressed tempered support for the deal.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a post on X that he hoped for a “more ambitious outcome.” But he said the agreement “provides a base on which to build.”
Some see deal as relief following tough talks
There were somewhat satisfied parties, with European Union’s Wopke Hoekstra calling it a new era of climate funding, working hard to help the most vulnerable. But activists in the plenary hall could be heard coughing over Hoekstra’s speech in an attempt to disrupt it.
Eamon Ryan, Ireland’s environment minister, called the agreement “a huge relief.”
“It was not certain. This was tough,” he said. “Because it’s a time of division, of war, of (a) multilateral system having real difficulties, the fact that we could get it through in these difficult circumstances is really important.”
UN Climate Change’s Executive Secretary Simon Stiell called the deal an “insurance policy for humanity,” adding that like insurance, “it only works if the premiums are paid in full, and on time.”
The deal is seen as a step toward helping countries on the receiving end create more ambitious targets to limit or cut emissions of heat-trapping gases that are due early next year. It’s part of the plan to keep cutting pollution with new targets every five years, which the world agreed to at the UN talks in Paris in 2015.
The Paris agreement set the system of regular ratcheting up climate fighting ambition as away to keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The world is already at 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) and carbon emissions keep rising.
Hopes that more climate cash will follow
Countries also anticipate that this deal will send signals that help drive funding from other sources, like multilateral development banks and private sources. That was always part of the discussion at these talks — rich countries didn’t think it was realistic to only rely on public funding sources — but poor countries worried that if the money came in loans instead of grants, it would send them sliding further backward into debt that they already struggle with.
“The $300 billion goal is not enough, but is an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future,” said World Resources Institute President Ani Dasgupta. “This deal gets us off the starting block. Now the race is on to raise much more climate finance from a range of public and private sources, putting the whole financial system to work behind developing countries’ transitions.”
And even though it’s far from the needed $1.3 trillion, it’s more than the $250 billion that was on the table in an earlier draft of the text, which outraged many countries and led to a period of frustration and stalling over the final hours of the summit.
Other deals agreed at COP29
The several different texts adopted early Sunday morning included a vague but not specific reference to last year’s Global Stocktake approved in Dubai. Last year there was a battle about first-of-its-kind language on getting rid of the oil, coal and natural gas, but instead it called for a transition away from fossil fuels. The latest talks only referred to the Dubai deal, but did not explicitly repeat the call for a transition away from fossil fuels.
Countries also agreed on the adoption of Article 6, creating markets to trade carbon pollution rights, an idea that was set up as part of the Paris Agreement to help nations work together to reduce climate-causing pollution. Part of that was a system of carbon credits, allowing nations to put planet-warming gasses in the air if they offset emissions elsewhere. Backers said a UN-backed market could generate up to an additional $250 billion a year in climate financial aid.
Despite its approval, carbon markets remain a contentious plan because many experts say the new rules adopted don’t prevent misuse, don’t work and give big polluters an excuse to continue spewing emissions.
“What they’ve done essentially is undermine the mandate to try to reach 1.5,” said Tamara Gilbertson, climate justice program coordinator with the Indigenous Environmental Network. Greenpeace’s An Lambrechts, called it a “climate scam” with many loopholes.
With this deal wrapped up as crews dismantle the temporary venue, many have eyes on next year’s climate talks in Belem, Brazil.
Daesh group claims attack on Sufi shrine in Afghanistan
- A local resident, who said he knew victims of the attack, said worshippers had gathered at the Sayed Pasha Agha shrine on Thursday evening
KABUL: Daesh (IS-K), the terrorist group’s branch in Afghanistan, on Saturday claimed responsibility for a gun attack that left 10 people dead at a Sufi shrine in northern Baghlan province.
Taliban authorities in Kabul have repeatedly said they have defeated IS-K, but the group regularly claims responsibility for attacks, notably against Sufi or Shiite minorities, targets they consider heretical.
On Friday, interior ministry spokesman Abdul Matin Qani told AFP that a gunman opened fire on Sufis “taking part in a weekly ritual” at a shrine in a remote area of Nahrin district, killing 10 people.
A local resident, who said he knew victims of the attack, said worshippers had gathered at the Sayed Pasha Agha shrine on Thursday evening.
They had begun a Sufi chant when “a man shot at the dozen worshippers,” he said on condition of anonymity.
“When people arrived for morning prayers, they discovered the bodies,” he added.
The UN special rapporteur for human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, wrote on X: “Religious minorities remain under grave threat. More prevention, protection & justice needed.”
The Daesh group accuses Sufis of worshipping more than one god because of their devotion to saints.
In mid-September, the group claimed responsibility for an attack in central Afghanistan that killed 14 people who had gathered to welcome pilgrims returning from Karbala in Iraq, one of the holiest sites for Shiites.
India opposes COP29 finance deal after it is adopted
BAKU: India strongly objected to a climate finance deal agreed at the United Nations COP29 summit on Sunday, but their objection was raised after the deal was formally adopted by consensus.
“I regret to say that this document is nothing more than an optical illusion. This, in our opinion, will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face. Therefore, we oppose the adoption of this document,” Indian delegation representative Chandni Raina told the closing plenary session of the summit.
